Enewsletter

Enewsletter • May 11, 2005

Notes from Vegan
Outreach

This Week Only: Free Book with
Donation to Vegan Outreach!

If you donate
$50 or more to Vegan Outreach or
sign up for a recurring donation
before next Wednesday (May 18),
you will receive an autographed,
hard-cover, limited advanced edition
copy of Erik Marcus' latest book,
Meat
Market: Animals, Ethics
and Money. You can sign up
for recurring donations via
givedirect.org (the
recurring option is on the second
page). (For those itemizing deductions,
$22 of this donation will not be
deductible.)

In pursuing our goal of preventing
and alleviating as much suffering
as possible, helping people stay
vegetarian is every bit as important
as persuading people to try vegetarianism.
For better or worse, not eating
animal products does have health
implications, and that is why Vegan
Outreach spends so much time and
effort addressing nutrition.

Many vegans and vegetarians find
the transition quite easy. In fact,
many lose unwanted pounds, improve
their cholesterol levels, and experience
other health benefits from changing
their diet. Other people are not
so lucky. For example, during his
latest weekly leafleting, Jack Norris
met an ex-vegan who now eats organic
chicken. She said that after 2 months
of being a vegan, she became anemic,
her hair was falling out, and she
felt weak all the time. Clearly,
she wasn't getting proper nutrition.
We don’t know why this was happening
-- it could simply be that she was
not eating enough calories, or perhaps
she has iron absorption issues.
But it does show the importance
of fully educating yourself on all
aspects of plant-based nutrition.

It would, of course, be easier
to promote a vegan diet if it was
unquestionably the healthiest, easiest,
and most natural diet of all, with
no possible use for any sort of
supplementation ever, or need to
pay attention to nutrition in any
way. And some vegans actually don't
pay attention to nutrition in any
way and seem to do fine! But in
addition to the number of people
who have a bad, short-term experience
with the vegan diet, studies
show that there are
issues in the average vegan diet
that need attention if you want
to optimize your long-term health.

Ensuring a regular and reliable
source of vitamin
B12 is one issue that
Vegan Outreach often highlights.
Maximizing omega-3
status is another that gets mentioned
less. Not getting enough omega-3s
can possibly lead to depression,
contribute to heart disease, and
increase symptoms of inflammatory
diseases (such as allergies). Calciumandvitamin
D also need attention.

Vegan Outreach's President, Jack
Norris, RD, has compiled a list
of the most common issues regarding
plant-based nutrition in his article
Staying
a Healthy Vegan. If
you have not read this article,
please make sure you take
the time to do so -- the animals’
future depends on our being fully
aware and educated.

We cannot simply advocate cutting
out meat, eggs, and dairy and expect
people to be able to maintain optimal
health. Because most people know
failed vegetarians (both famous
and not) as well as healthy non-vegans,
we can't make claims that animal
products are deadly poison. If we
don't want people to simply dismiss
us, we can't argue that it is impossible
to be truly healthy unless you are
a vegan.

Products of the Week:
Juice & Chocolate

Looking to get more antioxidant-rich
berries in your life? Check out
Northland
Cranberry juices --
the Cranberry-Blueberry is especially
good!

And don't forget how high in antioxidants
dark chocolate is! Irene RIndos
writes: "Scharffenberger
dark chocolate is the best dark
chocolate ever! The best is their
Nibby Bar, dark chocolate with cacao
nibs."

Notes from All
Over

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

On
Veganism (22 pages):
"Animal products are found
in a bizarre range of items, from
food to cosmetics to cars, and often
in the least obvious places....
We can't live entirely animal-product-free
existences in our culture, but we
can strive to live up to our principles
and ideals. And that includes being
compassionate towards ourselves.
Unless you have a serious food intolerance
or allergy, which will cause a medical
emergency, it is OK to slip up now
and then. Beating yourself up over
not noticing the cheese in a burger
is not productive - just accept
it as a lesson."

"...7:30 a.m. Put PETA 'I
am not a nugget' T-shirt on under
work polo. I know I've made a small
difference...."

Notes from Our
Members

I became vegan
as a result of your work over a
year ago and would like to say "Thank
you." My whole family now eats
less meat and three of my classmates
are now vegan. Keep up the great
work!-MS (aged 10), 4/28/05

Members
of Compassionate
Action for Animals
distributed approximately 1200 Why
Vegans during our vegan food
giveaway at the University of Minnesota
this past Wednesday (at right).
While we are still trying to figure
out how many people stopped by to
sample vegan food, initial estimates
are around 1500.-Greg Oschwald, 5/6/05
(More
pictures here)

I'm one of those
who swore they'd never quit eating
the meat. However, my best friend
convinced me to read your pamphlet,
rightly pointing out that as a philosopher
I should not shy away from the truth
of the matter, especially if my
motivation for remaining blissfully
ignorant was a simple matter of
"I like the taste." Logic
won out -- I read the pamphlet,
and I was thoroughly disgusted.-IF, Highland Park,
NJ, 5/2/05

Well, my outreach
in Newark has
made an impact. Today I drove in
to see a sign that read, "Welcome
to Newark! Meat-free since April
25, 2005." And just like we
were told would happen
if such a measure were implemented,
farm animals were running all over
the city and reproducing with reckless
abandon.
:-)
-Jon Camp (leafleting
here at UConn), 4/26/05

At the University of
Iowa, we recently
spent an afternoon leafleting on
campus. The next week, we were hosting
a veg info table at a college spring
festival and a woman came up to
us. She said she had been handed
an EIYLM brochure last
week while she was walking to class,
that it had made her mad and she
had thrown it away. She told us
that she came to our table to get
another copy. She said, "This
is so horrible. I've got to show
this to my friends."
Also
during our leafleting afternoon,
we passed a woman who told us that
we had already given her an EIYLM
brochure during another leafleting
day and that she had decided to
become vegetarian since. She also
asked how she could get involved
with our group's veg outreach!-AP, 5/5/05

My husband and I want
to support Vegan Outreach every
month. We feel your philosophy and
outreach program the most worthy
and worthwhile informative program
we have seen.-MP,
Madison, OH, 4/29/05

We had a peanutlunch today at work (everything
had to have some sort of peanut
in it). I gave my coworkers that
chocolate
peanut pie recipe from
your web site, and EVERYONE loved
it. They
ate more of that than any of the
other kinds of desserts.-MB,
Denver, CO, 4/27/05

Vegan Outreach is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the suffering of farmed animals by promoting informed, ethical eating.